It was a last minute break we kind of sprung on a friend out of nowhere. Last month several of us smooched off to Portugal for a weekend of surfing and eating. The surfing came first of course, but it was always followed by enough food and wine to make sleep a necessity in good enough time to ensure an early morning the next day.

we chose Portugal for the fair weather and excellent surfing conditions. We were north of Lisbon in the pretty town of Peniche.

Suffice it to say that the stay was thoroughly enjoyable and the town left a lasting impression on all of our party.

Soon after we returned to England we all met up and talked about the area with nostalgia and intent.

It was not long before we were avidly discussing how we could go again, even how we could all chip in to buy a property over there. We all went our separate ways to look into options available to us.

One of our party found an apartment for sale in the region for €300000 and we quickly assessed the costs, with the current exchange rates not being exactly favourable for the UK consumer this worked out at over 40 thousand pounds each. We discussed this for a while - the thought of owning a property in Portugal being extremely exciting for all of us.

Luckily one of the crew of potential investors was rather more canny than the rest of us, he did indeed work in the property market and had learned of a process referred to as off plan investment. This is the process whereby you can invest in a property during the pre build or pre construction phase. Off plan allows the developer to gain capital during the build and, at the same time, allows the investor to purchase at a discounted rate.

We looked at off plan investment in Portugal and quickly established that for far less of an investment we would be able to purchase ( off plan of course ) a far superior property.

We did, the off plan investment was sound and, although we had to wait for construction to complete ( 18 months ) we soon were the owners of a lavishly appointed Portuguese property. The off plan purchase having been mutually beneficial for both us and the developer. The investment has also seen a very favourable capital growth for all of us.

So, now we visit our Portuguese palace and fly through the surf, quite regularly.